• oce 🐆@jlai.lu
    1·
    2 months ago

    Some people think that because Python is the easiest language to learn, it’s going to be easy to learn programming with Python. But learning programming is still very hard, so many abstract concepts to grasp. Python just makes it a tiny less hard, almost insignificantly now that we can use an LLM to learn the syntax faster than than ever.

    • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      2 months ago

      as a complete layman and hobbyist i also personally think that “more pythonic” coding can sometimes be more confusing.

      I dont think any beginner reads “j for j for i in k” and instantly gets it.

      maybe unpopular opinion idk

      • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 months ago

        Anything that’s not an integer or a range doesn’t belong inside []. Much more readable to use zip, map, filter, etc. And more powerful.

        EDIT: that was meant for indexing lists. Strings inside [] for indexing ducts are fine.

    • AnAmericanPotato@programming.devEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      In practice, Python is not easy to learn programming with. Not at all. I see beginners wrestling with Anaconda and Jupyter notebooks and I weep.

      The fact that pip is intentionally broken on macOS and some modern Linux distros sure doesn’t help. Everything about environment management is insane.

      • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 months ago

        That is because when you’re a beginner, you read everywhere that you should be using anaconda and jupyter notebooks. I know because I did so. Neither of them lasted more than a week on my computer though.

      • tyler@programming.dev
        1·
        2 months ago

        Comparing python env management to Ruby or rust or even Java for fucks sake just goes to show that nobody actually cares about how easy a language is to use, they just care about what is popular or what they think is popular.

        • oldfart@lemm.ee
          0·
          2 months ago

          Ruby, of all the examples you could come up with? My Redmine is updated only every few years because I rarely have a whole day to deal with the mess that is Ruby deps managent.

          Java deals with this ellegantly.

          • tyler@programming.dev
            1·
            2 months ago

            Huh? I assume you mean RubyMine and I have no clue what dependency issues you could be dealing with unless you’re on windows (which python is even worse with). You have one package manager and one build tool on Ruby, compared to Python’s now 16 tools. Ruby is the gold star for package management which is why both Rust and Elixir copied enormous parts of it when creating their tools cargo and mix.

  • JATth@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 months ago

    Python is just a pile of dicts/hashtables under the hood. Even the basic int type is actually a dict of method names:

    x = 1
print(dir(x))
['__abs__', '__add__', '__and__', '__bool__', '__ceil__', '__class__', '__delattr__', '__dir__', ... ]

    PS: I will never get away from the fact that user-space memory addresses are also basically keys into the page table, so it is hashtables all the way down - you cannot escape them.

    • elliot_crane@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      This is basically what I’ve been telling people for years. Prototype in Python to get the concepts down, then when you’re serious about the project, write it in a serious language.

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
        1·
        20 hours ago

        python is IMO the closest thing we have to a platonic ideal scripting language: it’s pseudocode that actually runs and you can just slap together libraries with minimal mental effort until it works.
        Great for gently getting into programming so you quickly see results without having to learn arcane incantations, and for writing small tool programs; not so great for writing a kernel in.

  • gerryflap@feddit.nl
    1·
    2 months ago

    Good meme. However I do think that most people starting out will not really have to deal with any of those issues in the first few years apart from maybe the pip/venv/poetry/etc choice. But whatever they’ll pick it’ll probably work well enough for whatever they’re doing. When I started out I didn’t use any external libraries apart from pygame (which probably came pre-installed). I programmed in the IDLE editor that came with Python. I have no idea how I functioned that way, but I learnt a lot and hat plenty of fun.

    • MashedTech@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      2 months ago

      Of course! Why didn’t I think about that? Maybe I could also switch some other parts of the code to Lisp?

    • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
      0·
      2 months ago

      I still sometimes bang out small perl scripts for things that are too annoying/complex for command prompt and shell scripts but not worth writing something in, say, Go. I never learned python which is probably why I never use that.

      • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        People keep saying Python, despite how it (1) sucks, and (2) is super annoying to keep up to date, with package management and the like, unlike Perl that is more stable. Though Python is also easy to use and powerful and extensible.

        But I think each language type is what it is and has its own set of tradeoffs and balances. Unix is hyper-stable and secure but limited, Perl is powerful but requires discipline to use to full effect, and these days most people don’t bother to learn it. Python is… “common”, is perhaps the best way to put it:-). C/C++ is even more powerful, the latter bloated, and blamed for most memory management issues (although really, how much of that is merely bad programming practice? Okay, so it allows such though).

        And now Rust is the new hot thing.:-)